Female ski jumpers renew call for Olympic inclusion

REGINA — Female ski jumpers continue to fight an uphill battle in their quest to compete in the Winter Olympic Games.

In an attempt to advance their cause, two elite jumpers — Katie Willis of Calgary and 2009 world champion Lindsey Van of Park City, Utah — appeared at a Wednesday media conference in Denver to urge International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to meet with them.

“It was definitely frustrating,” Van said. “We didn’t get to meet with Rogge, but we got our idea across to the media that we want to meet and don’t really want to go ahead with a lawsuit, but that’s where we’re headed.”

Van and Willis are among 15 plaintiffs in a lawsuit that is to be heard April 20 in B.C. Supreme Court. The lawsuit was filed in May by female ski jumpers who maintain that they should be able to compete at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Male ski jumpers have been in the Olympics since the inaugural winter Games in 1924.

Rogge is in Denver for IOC executive board meetings, which began Wednesday and are to continue until Friday. The plaintiffs sent Rogge a registered letter last week, but he did not respond to their request for a meeting.

“That’s just how they work,” Van said. “The top guy in IOC is not going to make an appearance for some athletes that he doesn’t want to be in his Games, anyway.”

The International Ski Federation gave a resounding endorsement of female ski jumpers in 2006, voting 114-1 in favour of their inclusion in the 2010 Olympics. The IOC was not swayed, however, maintaining that ski jumping at the women’s level had not developed to the point where it was of Olympic calibre.

The lawsuit has been filed against the Vancouver Olympic Games Organizing Committee. The suit contends that the exclusion of women is discriminatory and in opposition to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“The reason it’s not (filed against) the IOC is very simple: Nobody has any authority over the IOC,” Women’s Ski Jumping USA president Deedee Corradini said Wednesday. “They can do whatever they want, so we had to look for another way to get this done.

“As our lawyers took a look at what our options were, VANOC, we feel, is the right place.

Our belief is VANOC can control whether the women jump or not. If this goes our way, VANOC is just going to have to tell the IOC, ‘The women have to jump. You can’t break the laws of Canada and we are subject to those laws.’ ”

Vancouver organizing officials contend they should not be the defendant because the IOC dictates the composition of the Winter Olympics. The IOC has not budged.

“If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high,” Rogge told reporters on Feb. 28, 2008. “In any other sport, you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions, of athletes at a very high level, competing for one single medal.

“We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line.”

Corradini said there are close to 100 women from 18 countries competing at the elite level. A total of 166 women are registered as active jumpers with the International Ski Federation.

Since 1991 the IOC has demanded gender equity from any sport it adds.

However, ski jumping has been grandfathered, or “grandmothered” in this case. Ski jumping and Nordic combined (which includes ski jumping and cross-country skiing) are the only male-exclusive sports in the Winter Olympics.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Willis, 17. “We’re doing whatever we can. We’ve gone through all the steps. This is the last step so hopefully this will be the thing we want.”

The first women’s ski jumping world championship was held Feb. 20 in Liberec, Czech Republic, with Van winning the gold medal.

The IOC has said it is amenable to adding women’s ski jumping for the 2014 Winter Olympics, earmarked for Sochi, Russia, providing its criteria can be met. Van is not prepared to wait that long.

“I need to get out and move on with my life if this isn’t going to happen,” the 24-year-old Van said. “I’m not going to wait for a bunch of old guys to decide my future when I can take it into my own hands and move on from ski jumping if it doesn’t happen now.”

For 2010, the women are asking for one event to be held on the normal hill in Whistler, B.C. The men’s event includes competition on the normal hill and large hill, as well as a team event.

Corradini — a former mayor of Salt Lake City — cannot understand why the IOC members are not open to that request.

“They would be heroes,” she said. “Everybody would shine. The lawsuit goes away. Why don’t they do something so simple?”

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